


In The Study at Midnight

by CanaDot



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extended Prompt Turned Very Short Story, First Person Narrative, Gen, Horror, Olde Timey Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23154286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanaDot/pseuds/CanaDot
Summary: A prompt that should have only taken up three paragraphs of my writing energy, though turned into a two hour fervour of writing, please enjoy the result of my efforts.It's bad... but, in no way the way you'd expect.





	In The Study at Midnight

As I write ever so quietly in my study, the only sounds to fill the air are the gentle scratchings of the feather pen against my paper, and the light pitter patter of rain on the glass panes that protect me from the sordid storm that has run through this region of late. If I were to take pause, I might just be able to hear the last dying embers of the once roaring fire in the marble fireplace a few steps from my desk. A cup sits dangerously close to the edge of my desk, filled with the dregs of black tea from the far lands of Imperial China. I tip the last of the caffeine-infused water back with a shudder of my spine and muscles, banishing the cup to the far corner of the desk in solitude as to avoid another ceramic mess for the help to clean. I wasn't fond of the work that I had been drafting up to this moment, a drab technical report of unimportant stance; yet it needed to be done all the same. My pen was running dry, so I sought to refill its small reservoir. But, as my hand drew near my well of ink, with great force, it jettisoned itself against the study wall, the black ichor of ink spreading down the wall against hardwood and leather-bound books.

I stood up with a start, my pen falling to the ground as the next cognitive thought in my mind, was how the embers in the fireplace loudly hissed with their final breath, no life left in them. The second cognitive thought, was how this great force extinguished my working candles, the pale moonlight stabbing through the treeline and subsequently the panes of glass. The air felt cold and dropping colder, yet there was no breeze or window that had flown open to cause this, yet the heat was leeched from myself and my clothing as I tentatively stepped around my desk. The servants were asleep as the maid had wished me good night hours ago and there was no sound left put the pitter patter against the panes. Yet as my feet slowly stepped in front of the other, a hum, like that of... something indescribable to me, as if one could hear pins and needles like that they get in their extremities, started to permeate my right ear, towards the spilled ink.

Existential dread filled me to my core, all of the muscles tense in my neck as all synapses of my brain held mine head from looking to its right, eyes locked in place... as the sound grew stronger... One second, then another, and I counted, it was growing stronger and had no connection to the throbbing sound of my heart within my ear canals. My instincts took a hold of me as I banished the thought of looking at whatever was to my right, my feet stepping towards the door to escape whatever may lay outside of my sight with great haste. With greater haste, the ornate couch that sat next to the central coffee table of the room fell into my path with a crack of both of its back feet, coming down hard onto a polished hardwood as the ends of my feet flinched backwards and my body turn right... in response.

I could not stop my head from aligning itself with my torso from that sudden fright, and what I saw caused my muscles to lose their volition to move at any rate. The black smear of ink down the wall had spread from its original position, but this did not aptly describe how it.. moved. The ink stretched out across every surface like a web.. no... like veins of blood, growing with every pulsation of the central mass of pitch darkness that literally swallowed the glass ink well.

The sound I had heard before was prevalent as ever, filling both of my ears as.. white blotches started to appear in my vision. I had seen 'floaters' in my vision before by sleep deprivation, but these blotches were painful, physically painful when they appear like small holes in a tapestry, constantly. They intensified whether the mass of ichor pulsated with unholy life, as if mortal man were not able to gaze upon it. In attempt to retreat, in however I was able, I closed my eyes and stepped backwards... this was a bad choice.

Streams of black liquid clambered across carpet, onto my polished shoes and stuck the soles to the carpet like thick pitch used to seal wooden boats. I fall onto my back with a gasp of my lungs and a drum of pain in my head as it slammed against a support column. The ink invaded no further, but the sound it changed. It was no longer pins and needles, it was different, more organic in the worse way possible. The sound was like that of a thousand whispers right next to the ears, utterly impossible by simple logic but it quickly progressed. These whispers, were malevolent, they were growing more cohesive as my body had lost all initiative to retreat.

As I felt my constitution break down, on the precipice of tears, the sound.. gave itself a voice. Allophones were drawn out, suddenly cut off and intelligible, I heard parts of dialect that sounded as if one would require multiple orifices to pronounce, then ancient Mesopotamian but with a specific dialect I couldn't begin to decipher... then Latin with nouns that hadn't ever been spoken, I believe.... then it worked itself quickly up the tree of language as if it had traveled straight from the tower of Babel to my doorstep, and suddenly my eyes lit up as it spoke a solid word of English...

"You...."

Whatever it was, it felt... and I do not know how I could feel its own emotion, it felt accomplished as soon as it found a dialect I could understand. My muscles were flooded with natural acids that came due to lowered oxygen, as my chest barely moved for fear of my life. The voice called into my ears once more, as if inside the canals, a bass clef tonal voice that did not come from the origin of flesh.

"Writer.....?"

It interrogated me in that single word, my neck moving up and down as to show my affirmation, a single hyperventilated breath coming out with it, a few words of my own spat out with it, "W-what do you want???"

The voice, its origin I could no longer see as white blotches forced me to close my eyes to stop the flashing pain... gurgled for a moment as if pondering, the pressure in my chest meanwhile feeling as if I may expire at any moment.

And as I waited with bated breath, my heart felt as if it had been stuffed with cold iron pilings, the voice made its absolute demand with great wait....

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

"College AU..."

I screamed with a single moment, the air filling with the echoing screams of myself, glass panes shattering and candles bursting into flames, immediately exploding like Chinese fireworks from the pure heat as the fireplace roared like a forest fire. If I could open my eyes, they would see naught but pure rage in physical form, but this only lasted for mere seconds...

I do not know how long I laid there in a fetal position, my forearms pressed tightly against my ears as my eyelids were seized shut. As my breathing became some modicum of close to standard, and I had convinced myself I had not passed over into the underworld for a eternity of torture, I opened my eyes.

Everything was back in its place, the embers were still present and sauntering towards extinguishing themselves and the pitter patter of the rain hit the very solid and intact glass. My muscles pulled themselves out of their fetal position like machines of old starting once more a new life, like oxidation grinding off with work.

I stood, my vision scanning from one side of the room to another, the candle light enough to show that everything was in its place. As a person of scholarly knowledge, I genuinely considered the need to obtain lithium compounds to treat a mental illness I perhaps, had not known I had possessed.

I was about to collect my papers, and sleep for a long time in the adjacent bedroom of mine after a comforting chapter from my latest reading, when I saw it.

The ink well on my desk, was absent, everything else except it, was present. My heart felt that pang of coldness as my vision slowly drew itself towards my right, there lay the ornate ink well, with not a drop of ink on any surface near it, or in itself. The floor boards creaked as I slowly walked over to it, bending down... and grasping it between my fingers.

A solid disk of pain coursed through my frontal lobe as I touched the glass piece, stumbling and collapsing back into my chair... as... as visions of... my god... as visions of young adult women in strange apparel not of this time talking filled my head... with strange Sapphic sex appeal in cramped dorms of... of a college.. with.. weird names that no parent would.. would possibly give their children....

I did not sleep, and would not sleep as these visions drove my hand to the paper, the pen scratchings no longer gentle as the pain could only be made to subside by transferring these visions to narrative... with tropes that I had no idea existed in literature, not until I documented them myself in this work I somehow was cursed with.

I no longer believe in a God after this night, and if there ever was one, we killed them.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, how was that for a first fic?
> 
> Impressed, disappointed, enraged or confused?  
> Please let me know!


End file.
